


Bird Song

by WarmaCrewe



Category: Namesake (Webcomic)
Genre: Domestic violence warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-05
Updated: 2015-02-05
Packaged: 2018-03-10 13:33:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3292142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WarmaCrewe/pseuds/WarmaCrewe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What shapes us, what fire burns away our innocence? The outside wounds heal so easily...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bird Song

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rybari](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rybari/gifts).



She returns naked and broken. At first she feels desperate relief.

 _Is it over?_ The street signs... she knows them. **Shchemilovskiy.**.. she's back in Moscow!

Where should she go? Through the red she remembers. _Take me home._ Vanessa begins walking in that direction.

And pauses.

_I can never go home again._

For what would wait for her? Her father's belt across her back, adding to her bruises. She has nothing in her stomach but knows that they will force her to do without. Punishment for “running away.” She never ran away, though she longed to. Now she is homeless with or without her acquiescence. Her feet turn towards the park, where the strong branches of the oak trees will offer her more refuge than the frigid arms of her parents ever would.

Vanessa is good at hiding. She realizes she cannot be seen in her current condition. However this turns out to be easier than she expected. People stare straight at her, but their attention slides away. She doesn't know it now, but soon she will come to loathe this even more than she loathed being hunted.

******************

Within hours Calliope is there, though. If nothing else, she will always be grateful for that. When her only clothes had long burned away, they shielded her. They stayed with her, fed her, bathed her. Tended her wounds.

The outside wounds go away easily.

The nightmares come like clockwork. Hello, it's 2:30am. Time to relive it all. Only they don't stop at night. Hello, it's noon. She sees a coat of arms with an arrow crossing a shield. It's that arrow, isn't it? The one they used to bring her down from the sky. The pain sears into her ribcage and when she comes to she's under the dining table, which is turning to cinders from the flames she has set.

“You're suffering classic symptoms of PTSD. Please. Let us help you. You don't need to go through this alone. Don't be afraid of us.”

*************

“She won't stop defying us. Vanessa doesn't make friends with the other children at school, and has gotten into several fights in the last month alone. Her grades are poor. We don't want to send her to a remedial school.”

They were the picture of worried parents, with her stodgy mother even taking a proffered tissue and dabbing at her eyes. Her father broods, putting an aged but muscled arm around his daughter. As if his arms offered protection.

The doctor asks Vanessa if it is true, if she knows why she is so angry.

She doesn't reply to his questions. Because if she does, the beatings will only get worse. Vanessa is usually good at lying. But with her father in the room, she isn't sure she can do it. So she keeps silent. The doctor sighs, takes out his prescription pad and scribbles something on it.

The pills they feed her sap the light out from her eyes. She loses weight dramatically. However, she stops fighting at school. She stops fighting anything. And so it goes on. Until the fire awakens and the portal takes her.

***************

“I don't need a fucking head-doctor,” Vanessa tells the medic.

“We wouldn't -” says the woman, reaching for her face.

“DON'T TOUCH ME!” she screams, but manages to contain the fire within her fists.

_I don't need a goddamn psychiatrist._

A voice whispers “shush” in her ear and to her surprise she is enfolded in warmth. She didn't accept the healer's touch, but she lets these gentle arms hold her. She sees the fire again, the fire that both protected her and marked her as a target. This time the flames are strands of hair.

“Come on Vanessa. Let's get you somewhere safe. No one is going to hurt you in your room, right?”

The hand before her eyes is bumpy with scars, the kind left as the mark of those who have been burned. Who did it? And why would he hold her, he who knows the destroying touch of flames? _That's all I know how to do. Destroy._

She looks up at his friendly freckled face, and he smiles. She smiles back.

“You are safe here, Vanessa. Just keep going.”

_I don't need another doctor. I need somebody to care about me. Just this one time. Please._

************

He's a soldier, so she's a soldier. Into battle they charge with the other identical pawns. A team. Vanessa has never been part of a group, and feels it rub against the grain of her personality. She still falls in line.

The chase runs across rooftops, over alleyways where mundanes don't even look up to see the sparks of magic above their stupid skulls. How she despises them and their simple existence.

Finally the ghost is cornered. She looks like a homeless bum, wearing tattered clothing in multiple layers, her face dirty and red. She sputters like a rat that still wants to retain its pride, to the very last.

“Cut you all! Suck the blood out of your -”

Alice's sword has pierced the roof of its mouth before it can complete its defiant declaration. “ **It.** ” Never a real person. The creature wriggles and incredibly tries to pull the sword out, moaning. Vanessa looks away, but then her attention shifts to the east.

Birds don't have a keen sense of smell, not next to their cousins in the animal kingdom. Yet they far outstrip their human friends.

Vanessa sniffs the air. Darts her eyes at Wendy. Something else is coming for them.

The man moves so quickly that he is like a blur before her eyes, yanking the ghost out from Alice's blade. He tosses the creature, light as a cloud, over his shoulder before dashing down the dimly lit road.

Vanessa is the first to see him and immediately lunges after the stranger. He dodges her in a light dance, holding the ghost as if she was nothing, dropping off the fire escape straight downwards. Vanessa flies after the man into the pit of the alley. She ought to be throwing fire at him, but something holds her back. To her astonishment he sucks right through the holes in the sewer gate. She finally conjures a flame in her hand and pulls back the iron, but the man is gone.

She hears them huffing and running down the pavement. Alice swears. “What _was_ that? He was like lightning.” Vanessa doesn't answer. “Vanessa – what did he look like up close?”

She snaps out of it. “Um, Middle Eastern? Average height, short black hair. He was wearing a trench coat.” _And the energy that came off of him..._ No need to tell them everything, though.

“Nose,” Alice hisses. “One of Their soldiers.”

“Nose? I thought the Rippers only had numbers, not names?” asks Vanessa, confused.

“Well this one is special. Causes us quite a bit of trouble. He's One's private dog, and carries out some of the most despicable acts without questioning.”

“So, he's just like us,” Vanessa says.

They stare.

Jack's expression darkens and he approaches her slowly, like a cat. “What are you talking about, Vanessa? We don't murder people in cold blood. We don't try to snuff out entire worlds. How can you even say that -”

“We do what we're told, don't we? We didn't try to save that woman. We killed her. Because we were told to. 'Just following orders.' I've heard that one before,” she continues. She hasn't raised her voice – she doesn't need to. Her words cut every person there. She sees the fear in their eyes.

“Vanessa, I recommend you report to Alex when we return to the center,” Alice says quietly.

“Yes ma'am,” Vanessa says, and gives Alice a military salute. Then she turns her back and walks away from them. Her team members don't stop her.

It's the same game as before. _Be a good girl, and we'll love you. But be a bad girl..._

****************************

When she gets back Alex gives her an earful. Time to “take a break” and think about her place. Jack doesn't speak to her. He's just like the others, after all. A mindless follower. They don't care about her. They care about their Worlds. People they will never meet. That's the reason the stories must go on, isn't it? Or else those animals, the men on the other side of portal who tortured her, will sadly die.

She is so tired after the pursuit that she slips into sleep as soon as she gets to bed. A bad idea.

****************************

Their faces wait for her.

The woman on the end of Alice's sword twists into Amber. “Vanessa! Help me!” she screams. Alice's smile turns into a wide sadistic Cheshire grin and she slices Amber open from mouth to belly. Amber's entrails spill onto the dirty concrete.

Her friend's blood seeps into a sewer grate where a pair of gleaming black eyes watch. Vanessa touches the blood and it turns to fire, igniting Alice, who is the one now screeching with pain.

The fire illuminates the alley, and through the grate she sees the man's eyes blazing like torches. He smiles from the shadows.

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAIMER: “Namesake” is the copyright of Isabelle Melançon and Megan Lavey. This story/art is licensed under the Creative Commons as a attribution, non-commerical work. No profit is being made off this piece.


End file.
